Istanbul walkabouts: A critical walking research of Northern Istanbul

This thesis investigates ongoing and future transformations on the patterns and processes of urbanization on northern regions of Istanbul occurring due to the impacts of recently constructed transport infrastructure from the lens of walking and mapping. With a focus on the route of recently constructed NMH, which currently connects Asia to Europe over the Bosphorus for the third time, the study aims to investigate emergent landscapes by initially employing walking method to explore these regions and subsequently mapping them based on the personal experience of the walks. It is argued that a dual focus that looks at the city simultaneously from the embodied experience of the walking researcher and the distant view of mapping will make it possible to have a deeper investigation of the city and produce a sharper and richer critique about its transformations. The study is composed of five main sections that are titled INTRODUCTION, RECOGNITION, WALKINGS, MAPPINGS and DISSEMINATION respectively. The WALKING LEXICON, WALKING LOG and POSTCARDS sections that illustrate the experience of the walks performed for this thesis study are placed as an appendix. The INTRODUCTION section intends to set the theoretical backbone of the thesis. It initially presents an overview of the thesis, then focuses on the problem, methodology, aim and theoretical framework respectively. It emphasizes the change in the scale and interest of architectural practice and it focuses on the adaptation of mobile methodologies which are prevalent amongst social sciences and humanities to a research conducted in architectural design. The RECOGNITION section is divided into two main parts. The first part is about northern Istanbul and defines the area as the terra incognita of the city. The obscurity of the area is geographical and academic at the same time. Northern Istanbul is a less frequented area of the city and thus it is also a less explored area as well. Thus, this chapter initially aims to recognize northern Istanbul. In order to do this, first, a look at the urban development of Istanbul is set forth in order to create a background. Thus, national and international academic studies have been scanned and incorporated to formulate a critical look on the urban development of Istanbul from the beginning of 20th century to early 2000s. Later on, this chapter focuses on the gap within current urban theory about Istanbul as existing literature and approaches mostly focus on "urban" areas of the city from an anthropocentric point of view. Northern Istanbul remains as an unexplored field. Thus, these uncharted territories are addressed from a "more-than-human" and "more-than-urban" perspective. Shifting the lens from human to nonhuman and from urban to nonurban allows to have a territorial approach upon Istanbul. This is followed by an insight to the concept of infrastructure and the paradigm shift on "infrastructure space". Infrastructure has been labelled as useful but boring and has been mostly left to the disciplines within engineering. However, there is a current change in this mode of thinking as infrastructures are thought to be the major transformers of a city. They are active and lively actants of urban space that are not necessarily pejorative. However, they are many times never solely constructed for utilitarian purposes. They are always an essential part of a bigger project orchestrated upon the territory. Since the study takes northern Istanbul as the area of inquiry, this chapter analyses northern Istanbul at large and interprets the current transformations taking place here with a focus on NMH. It portrays how northern Istanbul is taken as a newfound land, as if a tabula rasa area where mega-scaled infrastructures are obtruded upon. Following this, more detail about the megaprojects and how they are reshaping the current geography of these areas is given. The WALKINGS section presents the walking theory and method employed as a critical practice to explore, map and record northern Istanbul. Initially, the relationship of walking and transforming is put forth. The thesis claims that walking has engendered the "first artefacts" created by human beings. As people walk, they leave traces. There marks initially act as only small impressions on the surface of the Earth. However, as the earth slowly erodes more and more, these cumulative tracks transform into paths and then roads which eventually transform into cities. Thus, walking and architecture of the city are interrelated. Later on, it is emphasized that walking does not only refer to the act of moving from A to B but multiple modes of walking are addressed ranging from contemplation walks to pilgrimages, art walks to walking as a research practice. Following this, "critical walking" is delineated as a simultaneously critical and spatial practice. The fourfold critique of this thesis is outlined and other critical walking practices are given as examples. Subsequently, Istanbul Walkabouts, a walking project that came out of this thesis study is mentioned. The walkabouts performed in northern Istanbul for this thesis offers a heuristic, impressionistic and thus a subjective reading of the city. Walking in the terra incognita of the city is resembled going on expeditions and getting lost. However, performing these walks enables the walker/researchers to recognize these areas. In the final section of this chapter, walking on the territory is referred as the "school of site". Walking in these unknown geographies actually enables a process of (un)learning, (un)settling and (an)archiving as the site reveals things that would have been invisible and indiscernible through maps. Thus, the site itself transforms into a school. The MAPPINGS section initially focuses on the inherent relationship between walking and mapping. Walking is taken as an archaic mode of mental mapping the landscape, knowing one's location and surviving. Slowly, these mental maps are transferred to the ground in the form of megaliths. This means that certain happenings that occurred on the Earth were represented on particular locations on the Earth itself. Later on, as the idea of scale is introduced, the representation of the Earth is transferred to walls and rocks and followingly, to paper. At first, projections of the three-dimensional world on these two-dimensional surfaces favoured a certain subjectivity. The mapmaker intentionally included his position within the map. However, this position was annihilated in order to produce more "objective", "neutral" and "scientific" maps. In 1960s, the human perception of the Earth went through a paradigm shift with the voyages done to space as the planet is seen for the first time afar through the God's eye view. This also brought a turning point in mapmaking as satellite images started to be used for the representation of the world. On this virtual version of the world, scale becomes directly related to resolution and people start making journeys and leaving trails on this meta-Earth. Consecutively, the MAPPINGS section emphasizes the dilemma between actually being in the world and looking at it through someone else's depiction and proposes a perspective between the personal observation and God's eye view in order to explore, record and map the current transformations taking place in northern Istanbul. This in-between look is acquired with walking the map and mapping the walk. The textual, audiovisual, experiential and cartographic mapping methodologies developed within the process of this research are referred as narrative cartographies and outlined as Walking Log, Walking Atlases, Postcards, Dioramas, Walking-Mappings, Walk's Eye and Social Media. The chapter concludes by referring to the contradiction of the performative practice of walking and its representation on a map. However, the thesis asserts that the mapping methodologies developed within this research actually enable multiple and open-ended modes of mapping that can transfer the subjective, sensory and kinaesthetic experience of the walks and even suggest new meanings and project new possibilities. The conclusory DISSEMINATION section is a conclusory section divided in four parts; record, method, project and design respectively and it outlines the outcomes of the research. Record focuses on the archive created by the walks, method concentrates on the simultaneous use of critical walking and critical mapping as a method of inquiry, project explains that Istanbul Walkabouts is considered to be a spin-off of this thesis and sheds a light on the future direction of this research and design suggests a tentative proposal for a particular part of northern Istanbul that can be used as a model for further development. It is entitled as "dissemination" because the ultimate promise of this research is to spread the ideas, means, and concepts of this study to other research. The APPENDICES section is rather important for this thesis and it is suggested that it will be read together with the main text. The WALKING LEXICON is a nebula of words related to the practice of walking. These words have been gathered throughout the research process and this collection intends to emphasize the multiple modes of walking. The WALKING LOG narrates all the walks performed for the purpose of this study. It is part of the narrative cartographies; thus, it posits a textual mapping. It can be considered as the logbook of all the expeditions done to northern Istanbul. The POSTCARDS is a visual record of the walks with excerpts from the WALKING LOG and QR codes to videos of each walk.